A story about having a panic attack

More than 20 years ago, when I was still working as a financial manager at a foreign real estate finance company, I developed panic attacks.

At the time, it was the commercial real estate bubble, and despite a busy schedule where I was running around securing funding and catching the last train home every day, I was living a life where I woke up at 5:00 AM, went to a hotel pool at 6:00 AM to swim for an hour, and then ran to work.

I was out to lunch with a colleague, drinking iced coffee after the meal, and the moment I was laughing out loud at something,

“Ah, ah...”

I suddenly couldn't breathe.

“What's wrong? Are you okay?”

My colleague's voice faded away, and I thought, I can't breathe, is this a heart attack? Am I going to die right here?

Thinking that, I stood up to try to do something and walked around the area. As the surrounding customers watched with suspicion, the strength left my body and I collapsed on the spot.

My colleague called an ambulance, and I rode in an ambulance for the first time in my life to the hospital. Is it a cerebral infarction? A heart attack? Is my life over like this...

As I was thinking about such things over and over, the doctor told me,

“It's a panic attack. You're fine.”

That was it. Together with my family who rushed over, I was relieved, but what followed was difficult.

“What if I have another attack?”

When I thought that, my anxiety grew and grew, and my physical condition worsened. Especially when getting a haircut, when my neck was covered and I couldn't move from the spot for a while, my anxiety would increase and I felt like I was going to have an attack.

During the haircut, I would pinch my arm to distract myself, and by the time the haircut was over, my arm would be bright red.

At that time, there were not many books published about panic attacks, and information was limited. Am I a mentally weak person? If it continues like this forever, I might not be able to lead a normal social life.

When I visited a psychosomatic clinic for the first time in my life, the doctor asked me a few questions for about a minute and then said, “Well, I'll prescribe some medicine, so take it.”

That was all.

I think there are ways to heal while taking medication, but at the time I didn't feel like taking medicine, and I wanted to do something about it myself, so I read every book I could find on panic attacks.

One thing that saved me was learning that a panic attack does not mean you are mentally weak, but that your brain is malfunctioning due to cognitive distortion.

So, I thought that if I could fix the cognitive distortion, I could deal with it, and I tried various things like cognitive behavioral therapy on my own to cope.

I haven't had a panic attack since then, but even now, when I feel that my life, including work, is becoming too much, I have learned to listen to the signals my body is sending.

This experience has become a source of strength in my current work in education. Among the children I interact with every day, there are many times when they cannot control their emotions, such as anxiety or anger. For example,

"What are you anxious about?"

That feeling where, even if you are asked that, you cannot explain it, and the anxiety just keeps growing regardless of your own will.

Because I have experienced that, I think I have become able to imagine how the children feel and interact with them accordingly.

Many things happen in life, but perhaps the job of a teacher is one where you can make use of all those experiences.